How insensitive

Well the cat is out of the bag. Chapters 75 – 77 bring Hato face to face with HER, and we learn a few things about Hato’s past, who his “Stand” is (/modeled on), and we get a glimpse at a truly frightening uber-fujoshi.

I have to go with my initial impressions; while some commentators find her refreshing, my initial take on Kaminaga is that she is a cast iron, brass plated asshole.

I won’t use the usual feminine conjugation “bitch”. While she appears to be able to deploy a sophisticated emotional understanding, it is ruthlessly applied only in the service of her fujoshi-ness. In that she has an extremely instrumental view of males, when she finds one trespassing in her favourite stomping grounds she knows exactly what to do with him. Otherwise they are chess pieces. Hato can poke her back any time he gets the guts to, and he really should, if only for the sake of his brother.

Thanks, but

Put simply, she is conservative and far less understanding of folks and their oddness than the Genshiken tribe. I will take back 2 asshole points if she later lets on to being shocked that Hato “became” her and was just pulling a fast recovery.

And 2 more points if she admits later that what she never found was her Genshiken, a group that could accept her without her having to be in full-bore uber-fujoshi mode all the effing time.

If you are going to be single minded about your brand of fun, you can at least do it with a bit of style, like Sue.

And yup, Madarame saw through it immediately, and she knows that he knows, and….

Assholes have their uses though: Kaminaga points out the essential problem with Hato-kun and Hato-chan: What the heck is he doing with all that yaoi???

Sex and fantasy (and the grotty physical realities of self-pleasuring) are alluded to in Genshiken, but occur like murders in Greek tragedies – discretely offstage.

If we believe Ohno, she uses her favourite yaoi just like a male Otaku uses his pr0n dojins. The actual details of the fantasy – place of the subject, role taken, or not , etc) remain a matter of conjecture and individual preference. One can posit a wide range of fantasy meta-plots within the “solid” fujoshi domain, as well as for the fictional variety. But what does our favourite trap/ fujoshi/ fu-whatever dream of?

If he is gay, this is easy: he fantasizes of being seme or uke. Time to chase after Madarame.

But if he is still confused/ and/ or defiantly ambiguous and trying to live his split personality…

??????????

For one thing, does he have any idea of what a fujoshi fantasizes about when she gets all hot and bothered with her newest doujinshi? Does he seek to replicate his understanding of this? How? Does he have to become Hato-chan in order
to ENJOY the stuff? Has he made up his own unique fantasies? Or is his pleasure completely intellectual?

This is untenable.

He is either gay or is developing a new kind of queer. Or he is gay, but “simply” a voyeur – simple if he fantasizes about watching man-sex when in his male persona, as well as when in his female persona; less simple if he divides his interests according to which persona he has decided to put on. “Simply” “Bi” if he can get a good rush over a polymorphous tangle, but that (as previously mentioned) is a boring old Heinlein book – Yawn!

All we need for confusion to reign supreme is for S-sensei to bring a few “dollers” into the Genshiken. Or not; the mangaka has to maintain a balance between Genshiken-as-parable-of-a-supportive-social and Genshiken-as-freak-of-the-week-club.

Or we stay in manga-land and look for a easy-peasy comedic solution.

Perhaps I have been reading too much fluff like “Fakee Yuri”, but I know that a different author would just solve everything by having Konno let it slip that she likes dressing up as a guy.

“they argued all night, and proceeded to fight,
over who should do what and to whom…”

And so you shall..

Another explanation” exists if we step outside of the Genshiken world and back into the “solid” world where Hato and all the other Genshiken characters become elaborate mediation and play about the difficulties and fun of “assuming a voice”; a minor thought crime from a few decades ago’s culture wars, and a gross simplification of the essential problem of all fiction.

From this point of view, the Genshiken once again reveals itself as a wonderful maze of mirrors, with characters all obsessing about sexualized visual culture products, while trying to create them, while being warped by them, while being them… la la la.

Only Ogiue instinctively grasps/ telegraphs the real essence of Hato’s desire.

By becoming a fujoshi, by becoming Hato-chan, he is able to draw.

As for his fantasies, he dreams only of her.